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OVERPOPULATION IS A MYTH

Overpopulation is a myth. This myth has caused human rights abuses
around the world, forced population control, denied medicines to the
poor, and targeted attacks on ethnic minorities and women.

Most people think that the world is overpopulated. The problem is: it isn't,
and the science behind that idea is outdated and false. Sound science
has long ago debunked this idea, showing that the human race is in no
danger of overpopulating the planet, and in fact is facing a demographic
collapse. And yet, the vast majority of people worry that there are
too many of us.

We work to educate the public on the myth of overpopulation—but
we realize that most people don't want to spend their time in a
classroom learning about demographics. So we created a web site called http://overpopulationisamyth.com,
which takes difficult topics and distills them down into forms that are
easy to understand. Our series of wry, humorous cartoons has become a
hit on YouTube, and every piece of information that we present is backed
up in easy-to-validate format on our web site.

Episode 1: Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth

Where did this myth come from? When was humanity supposed to end?

Did Malthus really say to kill off the poor?

Yep. In his Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus calls for increased mortality among the poor:

All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the
population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made
for them by the deaths of grown persons… To act consistently
therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly
endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this
mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid
form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of
destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending
cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our
towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the
houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should
build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage
settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. (Book IV, Chap.
V) — Read it online.

Malthus thought doctors shouldn't cure diseases?

“But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging
diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought
they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total
extirpation of particular disorders. (Book IV, Chap. V) — Read it online.”

Did Paul Ehrlich really say that famines would devastate humanity in the 1970s?

Yep. In his 1968 work The Population Bomb, Ehrlich stated:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the
1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people
will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon
now.”

What's the UNFPA? How do they profit from fear?

The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) was founded in 1969, the year after Ehrlich published The Population Bomb.
They have been involved in programs with governments around the world
who deny their women the right to choose the number and spacing of their
children. Their complicit work with the infamous “one-child policy"
mandated by the government of the People's Republic of China, uncovered
by an investigation of the U.S. State Department in 2001, led the United
States to pull its funding.

The wealthy of the West, in their terror of poverty, have given
copiously to the UNFPA and its population control programs. Visit Population Research Institute for more info.

No way everyone could fit in Texas …

According to the U.N. Population Database, the world's population in 2010 will be 6,908,688,000. The landmass of Texas is 268,820 sq mi (7,494,271,488,000 sq ft).

So, divide 7,494,271,488,000 sq ft by 6,908,688,000 people, and you get 1084.76 sq ft/person. That's approximately a 33' x 33' plot of land for every person on the planet, enough space for a town house.

Given an average four person family, every family would have a 66' x
66' plot of land, which would comfortably provide a single family home
and yard -- and all of them fit on a landmass the size of Texas.
Admittedly, it'd basically be one massive subdivision, but Texas is a
tiny portion of the inhabitable Earth.

Such an arrangement would leave the entire rest of the world vacant. There's plenty of space for humanity.

Where are you getting these numbers?

U.N. Population Database. While they provide Low, Medium, and High
Variants, the Low Variant is the one that keeps coming true, so the Low
variant numbers are the ones used in this video. Check their online database.

The world's population will peak in 30 years? Prove it.

According to the U.N. Population Database, using the historically accurate low variant projection, the Earth's population will only add another billion people or so over the next thirty years, peaking around 8.02 billion people in the year 2040, and then it will begin to decline. Check their online database.

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Episode 2: 2.1 Kids: A Stable Population

What does it take to replace ourselves? Are we doing it?

Which scientists say it takes 1 person to replace another?

::polite cough::

Where does the 2.1 come from? Wouldn't replacement rate fertility be 2.0?

Replacement rate fertility requires each woman to replace herself. According to the CIA World Factbook,
there are 107 boys born for every 100 girls. Thus each 100 women need
to bear 207 children, on average, in order to produce the 100 girls
needed to replace them. Dividing 207 children by 100 women equals 2.07
children per woman, which convention rounds up to 2.1.

The population doesn’t decrease that quickly! People stick around.

But not indefinitely. Everyone will eventually die. Medical advances
have managed to extend lifespans, masking the effect of low fertility
rates on population size for a time. But when the generations that
failed to replace themselves begin to die off, the population begins to
rapidly shrink. Dramatic reductions in population are now underway in
most developed countries. It is a vicious cycle, and one that, because
of the scarcity of young people, is very difficult to escape from.

What economic hardships will happen if the fertility rate is too low?

Society is made up of old people and young people. Old people didn’t
start off old; they were once young: working, having families, and
paying taxes. These young people gradually age until they are old and
no longer able to work. When this happens, it is important for them to
be fully replaced by a new generation of young people. These young
people will in turn work, have families, and pay taxes, which go in
part to supporting the elderly population which can no longer support
itself.

However, this setup only works if the young are more or less equal in
number to the elderly. If the number of workers becomes too few to
support the number of elderly, then the whole system faces the danger
of a catastrophic collapse. Witness the debate over Social Security.

Why is the replacement rate higher in developing nations?

Many developing nations have very high rates of infant and child
mortality. As a result, the total fertility rate needs to be higher in
order to offset these losses.

Where are you getting these numbers?

The Total Fertility Rates for these countries are taken from the CIA World Factbook for 2010. Check it online.

Big deal. If future generations need more people, let them have more kids.

Would that it were so simple. When a population decreases in size,
the number of potential mothers also decreases. We say that countries
with very low birthrates--like Japan's 1.21 children per woman--are in
demographic collapse because each new generation is little more than
half the size of the one that preceded it. At this rate, it would take
only four generations to reduce the size of population to 10 percent of
its initial size. To offset this decline and restore the population
to its initial numbers, each woman would need to have 20 children!
Hardly a tenable solution.

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Episode 3: Food: There's lots of it

Are people hungry because there's not enough food on Planet Earth, or is the answer more complex?

Who says there is enough food for everyone?

Both of the world's leading authorities on food distribution (the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] and the World Food
Programme [WFP]) are very clear: there is more than enough food for everyone
on the planet. The FAO neatly summarizes the problem of starvation, saying
that "the world currently produces enough food for everybody, but many people
do not have access to it." Food is a lot like money: just because some people
have none doesn't mean that there isn't enough of it--it's just spread unevenly.

What do you mean when you say we are producing more food on less land?

Exactly that. Thanks to continuing increases in crop yields, the
world's farmers are harvesting hundreds of millions of tons more
grain each year on tens of millions acres less land than they did in
the 1970s and '80s. For instance, according to USDA figures, the world
was producing 1.9 million metric tons of grain from 579.1 hectares of
land (a hectare is 2.47 acres) in 1976. In 2004, we got 3.1 million metric tons
of grain from only 517.9 hectares of land. This is quite a jump.

This is not to say that we won't possibly need to dedicate more land to
farming in the future. The point is, a rise in population is not always
matched by a rise in the amount of land required to feed that population.

The U.S. government pays farmers not to grow food?

According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service's web site, "the
Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) provides technical and financial
assistance to eligible farmers and ranchers to address soil, water, and
related natural resource concerns on their lands in an environmentally
beneficial and cost-effective manner." What this means is that the
government has created a fund to allow farmers to give their land "time
off" from growing crops. This is done by "renting" the land from the
farmers, so that things like grass and trees can be planted there
instead of crops. This helps prevent soil erosion and encourages
wildlife habitats, and reduces sedimentation in streams and lakes.

The upshot of this is that our nation would never be able to afford to do
this if we were anywhere near maxing out our food growing capabilities.
Our current food surplus means that we are able to give some of our
farmland back to the wild, instead of frantically using it all to feed a
supposedly exploding population.

Where has barren land been turned fertile?

Lots of places. Northeast Thailand and parts of Brazil, for example,
were once considered inhospitable farming environments. According to
the FAO, these places had disadvantages like "unreliable rainfall
patterns, poor soils and a high population density in the case of
Thailand; and remoteness, soils prone to acidity and toxicity and low
population in the case of the Cerrado [Brazil]."

In both countries, the government was able to help farmers overcome
these obstacles. This was done through methods like better irrigation,
adding nutrients and chemicals to make the soil more suitable for
planting, and finding crops that would adapt well to the local
environment.

This was so effective in the case of Brazil that that country is now
considered an agricultural superpower--largely due to farming on the
"unfarmable" Cerrado.

Africa could feed the world?

Theoretically, it wouldn't even require all of Africa. According to a
2009 report published by the FAO, about 400 million hectares of African
savannah are quite suitable for farming--but only 10 percent of that
land is currently cultivated. Called the Guinea Savannah Zone, this
stretch of arable land winds through 25 African countries. And, even
though Africa has a dire history of war and unstable government, things
have recently begun to look up for many of these nations, which means
this land is more likely to be cultivated in the future.

According to the FAO, "Africa is better placed today to achieve rapid
development in agriculture than either northeast Thailand or the Cerrado
when their agricultural transformation took off in 1980 . . . There are a
number of reasons for this: rapid economic, population and urban growth
providing diverse and ample domestic markets; favourable domestic policy
environments, improved business climates in many countries; increased
foreign and domestic investment in agriculture; and the use of new
technologies."

What does this mean? In the short term, fewer starving Africans. In
the long term, possibly an incredible source of food for the rest of the
world.

How does blaming overpopulation for things distract from the real problems?

Since overpopulation isn't the cause of hunger, "fixing" overpopulation
won't fix these problems. In fact, the obsession with overpopulation often
leads to precious aid money being spent on population control rather than
real aid. "Family planning" programs miss the real point, especially in
places like Africa--which is that the people need legitimate, concrete aid.

How is poverty defined, for the purposes of this video?

For the purposes of this video, we use the World Bank's definition of poverty. The World Bank defines poverty as:

… pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many
dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the
basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty
also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to
clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice,
and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one's life.

You can find this definition of poverty online here.
At PRI, we like this definition because it recognizes the true nature
of poverty — that poverty is not just a state of having less money or
posessions than others around you. Although those details are an
integral part of poverty, real poverty is the lack of dignity and
quality of life that results from that lack of money or possessions.

In other words, human beings require more than simple survival to
make our lives worth living. This is why talking about poverty in
terms of statistics can be tricky sometimes, as we will see below.

If overpopulation doesn't cause poverty, what does cause it?

The thing to remember about poverty is that it isn't a disease or a
“condition,” like the measles or a broken leg. Poverty is the state of
not having what we need. It is a terrible state to be in, to be sure,
but it is the state we all revert to when our support structures are
removed. Poverty is like darkness: it isn't a thing. It's the lack of a thing.

Essentially, the only way that poverty has ever been defeated,
anywhere, is by infrastructures that humans have set up. So, when
poverty does exist, it is when these infrastructures either 1)
don't exist, like in underdeveloped nations, or 2) are broken or have
holes in them. Essentially, fixing poverty is about fixing bad
infrastructure, not about eliminating people.

This is made obvious by the fact that the poorest nations in the
world are often among the least populated. Take the Congo, for
instance, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a
meager per capita GDP of only $300. The Congo's population density is
only 75 people per square mile, a fairly light population density.
Compare this with the Netherlands, one of the wealthiest countries in
the world with per capita GDP of $39,200. The Netherlands has a
population density of 1,039 people per square mile. (these numbers
come from the CIA
World Factbook.

You claim that when people move to more crowded areas, they're actually more likely to get out of poverty. Prove it.

In 2008, the World Bank put out a paper called “Urban
Poverty: A Global View,” which discussed the effects of
urbanization (the process of more and more people moving to crowded,
or “urban” areas). According to the World Bank, people who
moved to urban areas were not only more likely to escape poverty, but
were also likely to be better off over time because
“urbanization contributes to sustained economic growth
which is critical to poverty reduction.”
(emphasis ours)

“Overall,” the World Bank continues, “the
urbanization process has played an important role in poverty reduction
by providing new opportunities for migrants and through the
second-round impact on those who stay in rural areas …the
urban economy provides opportunities for many and is the basis of
growth and job creation.”

Of course, poverty in crowded areas still exists (which is the
larger point of this paper). But the point is that it continues to
exist in spite of, rather than because of human
population.

What is it that brings human beings out of poverty?

Like most things, the answer to poverty isn't any one simple thing.
However, we can say with certainty that every method to alleviate
poverty requires one primary ingredient: community.

Basically, in order for human beings to escape poverty, they need
other human beings. Solitary human beings are incapable of solving
some of the most basic problems that need to be solved in order for
their lives to improve. With community, there is a collection of minds
and a multiplication of labor that allows human beings to solve
problems and accomplish more difficult and complicated tasks. The
larger the community, the more effectively and creatively this
division of labor is likely to occur.

According to acclaimed economist Julian Simon, the multiplication of humans has directly led to the improvement of our species:

“It is a simple fact that the source of improvements in
productivity is the human mind, and a human mind is seldom found apart
from a human body. And because improvements — their invention and their
adoption — come from people, it seems reasonable to assume that the
amount of improvement depends on the number of people available to use
their minds.”

— Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource

Of course, this doesn't mean that simple population growth leads
to human improvement. There are plenty of places with
large populations that remain poor. The point is, any time human
beings get the opportunity to work together and better their
situation, the percentage of poor people is likely to drop
significantly.

You claim that as population has grown, the percentage of poor has gone down. Prove it.

According to demographers Joyce Burnette and Joel Mokyr, as
humanity's numbers have grown, our average standard of living has
grown as well. These scientists wrote a paper entitled “The
Standard of Living Through the Ages,” found in the book The
State of Humanity (you can get the book from
Amazon here). In it, they point out that every single statistic
that we have on this subject points to one simple truth: that as
population has grown over time, the average person has become better
off.

They measured this in almost every way imaginable. Burnette and
Mokyr have graphs showing rising per capita income. They have graphs
showing average life expectancy, average height, caloric consumption,
sugar consumption, cotton consumption, even beer consumption! Every
single one of these averages has been steadily increasing over time as
the population has grown.

This is in direct contradiction to overpopulation alarmists, who
hold that as population increases poverty becomes more severe. They
claim that this is simple common sense. As counter-intuitive as it may
seem, science actually shows the opposite. As population grows,
productivity and innovation grow, which means that more and more
people have access to the goods and services that they need.

Maybe population control isn't the answer to poverty. But does it actively hurt the poor?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is very, very yes.
Population control programs don't just miss the point on
poverty … they distract from it. Poverty can be alleviated
by a number of different programs. But when the focus is on bringing
down population, valuable time, energy, and resources are spent
solving a “problem” that doesn't exist, rather than the
real problems at hand.

"Family planning" programs miss the point, especially in places
like Africa — which is that the people need legitimate, concrete
aid. People who are hungry, cold and exposed need food, water, and
shelter — not population control.

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Episode 5: 7 Billion People: Will Everyone Please Relax?

It's a huge number. But it's not what you think.

You
are very confident about the earth’s population leveling off and then
falling. How can you prove this? After all, population is still
growing.

Population is still technically growing, but according to the United
Nation Population Division’s numbers, that growth is slowing
dramatically.

The United Nations Population Division (UNPD) is the most reliable
source of population statistics in the world, which is why we use their
numbers for our videos. And, according to the UNPD, population growth
will continue to slow down over the next few decades. In fact, if
current trends persist, our growth will halt right around 8 billion by
2045. After that, our numbers will start to fall off, slowly at first,
and then faster.

If you find this whole idea counterintuitive, don't worry! You're
not alone. At first glance, it really does seem like population is
skyrocketing. That’s because we're still adding a billion people every
few decades . . . and a billion people is a lot of people. But the way
we can tell that population is not ballooning out of control is
precisely the fact that we’re only adding a billion people each time.
And soon, we won’t even be adding that many.

You claim that the UN’s predictions are reliable. How reliable have they historically been?

Again, it depends on which variant you use. In our research, we’ve
looked at the UN’s predictions and how they have compared with real
life--and in every case the “low variant” has been the most accurate.
You can run the numbers yourself here

Even
if population growth is slowing down, a billion people every 15 years
is still a lot of people. Isn’t this still a problem?

It is a lot of people. And of course, greater numbers bring their
own challenges and issues. But there isn't any convincing evidence to
show that the size of our population is the cause of the world's most
pressing issues, like war, famine, disease, and poverty.

Let's put it another way. Since we have more people, our wars are
bigger. Our famines may affect more people, and more people will have
diseases and be poor. But population growth didn't create these
problems--they have have existed since people have existed.

In other words, we can't blame population for problems that have been
around forever. The only difference is, since there are more of us
now, these problems affect more people.

Why has the global total fertility rate dropped so much?

Scientists are still debating exactly why, but there's no doubt that
it is happening. All over the world, birthrates have been dropping
quickly, and for nearly 50 years now.

Many demographers think that it is because more and more people are
urbanizing (moving into large cities). When families live out in the
country on farms, it makes more economic sense to raise larger families,
so that they have people to help them and care for them in their old
age. It’s also true that cities tend to have better healthcare
facilities, which reduce infant mortality. This in turn means that
parents end up having fewer children, since more of their existing
children are surviving to adulthood.

Demographic expert Philip Longman observes, in his book The Empty Cradle,
“As more and more of the human race find itself living under urban
conditions in which children no longer provide any economic benefit to
their parents, but are rather costly impediments to material success,
people who are well adapted to this new environment will tend not to
reproduce themselves. And many others who are not so successful will
imitate them.” (p.31, available here)

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Episode 6: Urbanization: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad City?

Cities are overcrowded. The world is not.

Innovation, Collaboration, and Economic Development are possible only in cities. Why is that?

When more people are grouped together, they are able to put their
minds together and come up with better ideas and ways to improve in
their society. Because of this, the city is able to offer more
opportunites, so people move there. According to the UNFPA on urbanization:

In principle, cities offer a more favourable setting for
the resolution of social and environmental problems than rural areas.
Cities generate jobs and income. With good governance, they can deliver
education, health care and other services more efficiently than less
densely settled areas simply because of their advantages of scale and
proximity.

The acclaimed economist, Julian Simon, agrees with the fact that
there is a direct link between community size and human improvement:

“It is a simple fact that the source of improvements in
productivity is the human mind, and a human mind is seldom found apart
from a human body. And because improvements — their invention and their
adoption — come from people, it seems reasonable to assume that the
amount of improvement depends on the number of people available to use
their minds.”

— Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource

You claim that birthrates are lower in urban areas than they are in the country. Who says so?

Many studies show that birthrates are lower in urban areas than in rural areas.

This document from the UN shows the urban vs. rural birthrates for a lot of countries (See table 11).

Another study from the DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys) website. They did an extensive fertility study in Malawi in 2000.

This study shows a drastic difference between rural and urban
dwelling women. The Total Fertility Rates for rural vs. urban being 6.7
and 4.3 respectively.

The promise of better jobs, prestigious schools, modern healthcare, and
high culture calls people to leave the countryside and move to the
city.

Since 2008, more than half the world’s population has become
urbanized. There is a clear rural to urban draw going on globally. Given
the connection between population numbers and human improvement (see
question 1 above), it makes sense that the urban population percentage
is growing. There are more opportunities in the city than in the
countryside.

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